'Waiting for Godot' arrives at Washburn University theater

Although regarded a masterpiece, meaning of Beckett's play defies definition

In Washburn University Theatre's production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," Estragon (Colby Cox), right, passes the time eating a carrot as Vladimir (Andrew Fletcher) looks on. The final three performances of the tragicomedy are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in the university's Andrew J. and Georgia Neese Gray Theatre.

Devin Denman plays the slave Lucky in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," which Washburn University Theatre will stage at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in the Andrew J. and Georgia Neese Gray Theatre on the Washburn campus.

Related Stories

Although a poll of 800 playwrights, actors, directors and journalists deemed Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” “the most significant English language play of the 20th century,” the play’s meaning defies definition even by the playwright.

“When asked about the meaning of his play, he replied he did not know,” director Paul Prece wrote in the program for Washburn University Theatre’s production of “Waiting for Godot,” which opened this weekend and will conclude with performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in the university’s Andrew J. and Georgia Neese Gray Theatre.

The simple plot has two characters, Estragon (Colby Cox) and Vladimir (Andrew Fletcher) waiting endlessly and in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot.

“I don’t know who Godot is,” Beckett wrote. “I don’t even know (above all don’t know) if he exists. And I don’t know if they believe in him or not, those two who are waiting for him.”

As for the play’s other two named characters, Pozzo (Dalton Hane) and his slave Lucky (Devin Denman), who Beckett wrote “pass by towards the end of each of the two acts, that must be to break up the monotony.”

However, with economic use of language and characters and stage movements influenced British music all burlesque and silent film stars, such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, Prece said, “Beckett dramatizes a condition.”

“Godot may represent something different for each of us,” Prece said. “The landscape of this play is neither wholly tragic nor comic, but a mixture, like life, like time, like breath, like a pulse, like waiting.”

As for Beckett, he said of “Waiting for Godot”: “As for wanting to find in all that a broader, loftier meaning to carry away from the performance, along with the program and the Eskimo pie, I cannot see the point of it.”

The “Waiting for Godot” cast also includes A Boy (Abbey Geiss) whose role is to tell Estragon and Vladimir that Godot isn’t coming today, but maybe tomorrow, if they wait.

Tony Naylor designed and lit the sparse set, which, by Beckett’s directions, represents “A country road. A tree. Evening.”

Sarah Maloney stage-manages the play and was its assistant director.

“Waiting for Godot” is Washburn University Theatre’s summer production, which will have encore performances at the start of the fall semester with shows set for 7:30 p.m. Aug. 21-23 and 2 p.m. Aug. 24.